Sunday times Editorial: Nuclear deal: all the alarm bells should be ringing

Today we reveal fresh details of how President Jacob Zuma personally accepted the R500000-a-year bribe offered to him by French arms manufacturer Thales 14 years ago. That Zuma, who was the country's deputy president at the time, was offered a bribe is not new. At the trial of his financial adviser Schabir Shaik, who was later convicted for fraud, the state conclusively proved that the company had sent an encrypted fax confirming the illegal deal.

Zuma has always maintained his innocence and denounced efforts by the National Prosecuting Authority to have him charged, saying they were part of a "political conspiracy" against him. Yet he has spent the past 11 years using every trick in the book in order to avoid appearing before a court of law to answer to those charges.

The "spy tapes", the details of which we also write about in this edition, have been part of his arsenal in his long-running legal battle with the state.

And he would have won the battle long ago, were it not for the Democratic Alliance's tireless struggle to have the tapes - as well as all the other evidence used by the NPA and the then acting National Director of Public Prosecutions Mokotedi Mpshe as the basis for their decision to drop all charges against Zuma - made public, for purposes of having the decision reviewed by the courts.

While the transcripts of the tapes do seem to suggest that an unprofessional and highly inappropriate relationship existed between top NPA investigator Leonard McCarthy and then president Thabo Mbeki's political lobbyists Bulelani Ngcuka and Mzi Khumalo, it must be left to the courts to decide whether such a relationship contaminated the state's case against Zuma.

What comes out clearly from our stories about the R500000 bribe and the "spy tapes" is that the president has a criminal case to answer.

That he has skilfully dodged prosecution for so many years by challenging the state at every turn, at great cost to the taxpayer, has not only confirmed to most people's minds that he has something to hide, but has greatly undermined his administration's self-professed objective of rooting out corruption.

Also making a mockery of the state's anti-corruption campaign is the manner in which the ANC is throwing everything but the kitchen sink in its attempt to have Zuma shielded from the public's demand that he pay back a portion of the R246-million spent on upgrading his private home in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal.

The ANC sank to a new low in parliament this week, using its majority to stonewall a legitimate bid by the opposition to have Zuma, public protector Thuli Madonsela and all other important players in the Nkandla saga appear before a multiparty ad hoc committee set up to probe the matter.

The ANC's move, which is now likely to be the subject of a court challenge after opposition parties walked out of the ad hoc committee, further strengthen growing public perceptions that the ruling party's raison d'être is now to protect Zuma from accountability at all costs.

It is within the context of all of this that the nation this week received with shock and disbelief the news of a secret R1-trillion nuclear "deal" between South Africa and Russia.

Although a joint statement issued by the Russian state-owned nuclear company Rosatom and our energy department stated that an agreement had been signed, laying the "foundation for the large-scale nuclear power plant procurement", many in government and political circles appear to have been caught off-guard by the news.

The secrecy around the deal has caused unease among the ANC's alliance partners and those it has deployed in government. It has also caused opposition parties to demand full disclosure by Zuma who, a month ago, spent a week in Moscow on an undefined mission.

Given the fact that the nuclear deal is estimated to cost more than the controversial arms deal, that it is shrouded in secrecy and that the man putting it together has such a chequered track record, who can blame South Africans for being suspicious?

It may very well be that nuclear technology could help South Africa solve its energy crisis, although critics of the project believe there are cheaper alternatives to a nuclear solution.

The manner in which the government has gone about it, however, stinks.

Zuma, who is not known for taking a keen interest in governmental matters, appears to have made this his personal project.

Last year he removed his then deputy, Kgalema Motlanthe, as chairman of the national nuclear energy executive co-coordinating committee. He himself replaced Motlanthe.

Following his re-election as president, Zuma than installed one of his most trusted cabinet lieutenants, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, as the new energy minister. Were all these moves aimed at engineering the awarding of the lucrative contracts to the Russians?

How does the president, who has become extremely close to controversial Russian leader Vladimir Putin, personally benefit from all this?

These and many other questions around the deal will not go away until the government is transparent about what deals it has or is planning to enter into.

The sad experience of the arms deal saga was a rude awakening for our country which, emerging out of apartheid, naively believed that our politicians - many of whom had devoted their lives to fighting for freedom - could be trusted to act in the public interest without lining their pockets.

If we accept the nuclear deal without demanding concrete answers, it will be a sign that, 20 years into democracy, we have learnt nothing at all. And it will show that those we voted into power can no longer be trusted to act in our best interests rather than their own.